On Monday, Twitter temporarily blocked people in India from defeating various accounts of activists, political commentators, a popular movie star and a leading investigative journalism magazine, the Caravan, by order of the government of the country. All reports had one thing in common: they had been critical of India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi. Twitter recovered the accounts more than six hours later, telling government officials that the tweets and accounts constituted freedom of speech and were newsworthy.
The move comes during a crackdown on dissent in India and raises questions about the role American tech companies are playing there. In recent weeks, authorities in India have filed sedition cases against prominent journalists over reporting peasant protests against Modi’s government. Last weekend, police in New Delhi, the capital of India, arrested two journalists, one of whom is still in custody.
Last week, calls to “ shoot ” protesting farmers were popular on Twitter for hours, as thousands of tweets encouraging police brutality flooded the platform.
Some of the most prominent accounts that Twitter temporarily blocked in the country included the accounts tweeting updates from the farmers’ protests, in addition to the Caravan.
“Caravan staff believe Twitter’s decision to withhold our official account is the latest in a long list of targeted attacks posted on the publication for fearlessly chasing important stories,” said Vinod K. Jose, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, told BuzzFeed News one of the journalists charged against him last week.
After the caravan returned to Twitter, it tweeted, “Our account has been restored. Today more than ever it is clear that real media needs real allies. We thank our readers, subscribers and contributors for their continued support. “
In a statement, Twitter said, “Many countries have laws that may apply to Tweets and / or Twitter account content. In our ongoing effort to make our services available to people everywhere, as we have one correct reach request from an authorized entity, you may need to refuse access to certain content in a particular country from time to time. Transparency is essential to protect freedom of speech, so we have a disclosure policy for content that is withheld. Upon receipt of requests to withhold content, we will immediately notify affected account holders (unless we are prohibited from doing so, such as if we receive a court order under seal). “
Twitter withholds tweets and accounts, including in the United States, if it “receives a valid and correct reach request from an authorized entity,” the company said. website. These tweets or accounts are usually visible in the rest of the world. The company says it will “immediately notify affected users unless we are prohibited from doing so,” and publishes the requests on Lumen, a Harvard University project.
But people whose accounts had been temporarily blocked in India said Twitter did not notify them before taking action.
“They did not contact me before taking action against my account,” Sanjukta Basu, a political commentator whose account withheld Twitter, told BuzzFeed News.
Jose said Twitter did not notify the magazine before the account was blocked and did not hear from the company until an hour after the blocking. “Twitter has not disclosed where the legal removal request came from,” he said.
BuzzFeed News found that the rule of law came from the Indian IT Ministry under a section of the law that allows the government to remove content that is considered a threat to national security and prevents companies like Twitter from disclosing information about it. blocking an account. or a tweet. The IT ministry declined to issue an official statement.
Twitter confirmed the orders were from India’s IT ministry but said it would not upload them to the Lumen database because the accounts had been unblocked.
The company is caught between local laws and global human rights standards.
“Internet platforms must ensure that any actions they take in response to government procurement contracts for content removal comply with international human rights standards,” said Raman Jit Singh Chima, senior international counsel and Asia Pacific Policy Director at Access Now, a nonprofit internet lawyer organization, BuzzFeed told News. “They have to challenge orders that are overboard or that explicitly try to stop media organizations from reporting.”
That can mean, even temporarily, taking actions that seem unthinkable in other countries – actions that have led to sharp criticism.
“Can you imagine @twitter briefly tugging at the New Yorker or Atlantic report after a legal letter?” tweeted Nicholas Dawes, editor-in-chief of the city and former director of Human Rights Watch. “Applying human rights-based content moderation standards on a global scale may be difficult, but it’s the job they applied for.”